BPF slams ‘ridiculous’ packaging targets

The BPF said ministers’ preferred proposal for plastics packaging targets, outlined in a consultation that closes this week, ignored expert advice and had been “widely ridiculed” within the industry.

The trade body said: “The direct cost to plastics packaging producers and handlers would be an extra £70m over five years which is in effect a direct and unfair tax on the packaging sector to support an unachievable target.

“The government uses excessive growth figures for plastics packaging which have been widely ridiculed within the industry.”

The BPF said Defra had ignored the views of its own expert committee, the Advisory Committee of Packaging’s Plastic Packaging Recycling Task Force.

Bruce Margetts, chair of the BPF’s packaging group said: “It appears to be a straightforward tax on producers rather than a realistic road-map for infrastructure and quality improvement. Production and filling of packaging could be lost from the UK.”

That was 2018 – the year when China’s ban on most waste material imports really showed how decisions in one country can affect those on the other side of the world, as the UK and others scrambled to find alternative capacity.

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